


Tomorrow Will be Kinder

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Family, Fluff, Gen, Melancholy, Sad, Suicide mention, abuse mention, but otherwise this is pretty notgay, the only reason this is gay is because emmeryn is gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8166830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: Emmeryn gives goodnight kisses. It prompts more emotional reaction in some than it does in others.





	

**Author's Note:**

> wow a piece about emmeryn that doesn't have phila in it! amazing
> 
> i still love phila though worry not she's just Apparently Dead in this particular fic #Justice4Phila2k16

It starts off simple. After a long night in the infirmary, saving lives and preventing illnesses and such, Lissa yawns and says she's tired, so she's heading to bed. It's an hour past lights-out, but the medics were up late removing arrows from Gregor's person— his frontline service is appreciated, but Emmeryn, for one, would appreciate it if he took better care of himself. But he's stable and it was a job well done, so Brady takes night duty and lets everyone else retreat.  
  
"I'm going to bed," Lissa says, stretching. "'Night, Emm."  
  
Emmeryn isn't sure her exact thoughts during this. But she beckons Lissa over anyway, and when Lissa does, mildly confused, Emmeryn stands on her toes and gives her a gentle little kiss on the forehead.  
  
Lissa looks at her very strangely. _Play it off, Emm,_ Emmeryn tells herself. So she just smiles, like it's the most normal thing in the world. "Goodnight."  
  
Lissa touches her forehead, blinks, and then leaves. It must be a thing she did, Emmeryn figures, because she rarely gets strange urges like that unless it was something she used to do. Goodnight kisses are probably one of those things. She's learning more about who she used to be every day.  
  
The second night, Lissa's friend Ricken gets in on the action. He mentions it like it's a joke, and Lissa laughs, but Emmeryn obliges anyway— one for both of them, for a good night's sleep. Emmeryn's cognitive and motor skills may have taken a hit, but her hearing is sharp, so she hears Lissa whisper to him, "Just go with it."  
  
"I don't think I mind," Ricken whispers back. "It's been ages since I got a goodnight kiss. Can I come back tomorrow?"  
  
And Emmeryn decides he's a sweet young man, and she doesn't mind at all.  
  
The third night, Robin and Tharja come by to check on their stockpiles— well, Robin does. She's recruited Tharja for check-mark duty.  
  
"I heard you were giving out goodnight kisses," Robin jokes.  
  
"Yes," Emmeryn says, with full honesty.  
  
Robin chuckles. "That's sweet. Do we get one?"  
  
It's entirely humorous, but Emmeryn thinks, _don't joke with me, young lady. I'll give everyone here a goodnight kiss, just see if I don't._ So she gives a goodnight kiss to both Robin and Tharja, leaves them taken slightly aback, and goes about mending a set of curtains like it's no big deal at all. An advantage of her current percieved state, Emmeryn has learned, is people mostly let her do whatever she wants and will dismiss anything strange and just accept it. Emmeryn has seen no reason to take advantage of that until today.  
  
 The fourth night adds Libra, Maribelle, Brady, and Noire. They all worked so hard in the field that day, Emmeryn thinks they deserve it, and they're all four too exhausted to argue. Owain comes in on the fifth, and brings Cynthia and Marcus on the sixth. The seventh adds Lucina, twisting the hem of her shirt nervously and mumbling about not getting goodnight kisses when she was younger. And Emmeryn obliges them all.  
  
By the end of the second week of this, Emmeryn has almost the entire army— all of the future children, and nearly all of the present members. It has gotten to the point where there's a line every night. But there are people still missing, so after everyone is accounted for, she hangs her apron on a hook on the wall and leaves the infirmary.  
  
 The Garrison is large enough that she could get lost if she doesn't pay close attention to where she is, but she's getting better since Robin let her follow her around on her morning mail deliveries. Emmeryn can't remember why, but she knows she has a great respect for the postal system. She wonders if she always has.  
  
Chrom's bunk is on the northern side of the courtyard with the rest of the bunks, and it's the second row down and the last one to the east on that row. Emmeryn knows which one is his because there are several notes pinned to his door from Robin— things like, _"Chrom, we need more vinegar. RH."_ and _"Training session tomorrow morning, 5am. RH."_ They're always on blue paper. Maybe Robin thinks Chrom is less likely to ignore them if they're his favorite color.  
  
She knocks on the door once. She tells her hand to move back and do it again. The time it takes for her to think the thought, tell her hand and arm to move, and for them to actually do it is about two seconds, total. She's about to do it a third time when Chrom opens the door.  
  
"Oh, hi, Emm," he says. He shifts, a bit awkwardly. Emmeryn doesn't quite understand why he never seems to know what to say to her— well, she supposes she can guess, and supposes he'll get used to it.  
  
She smiles at him. "Evening," she says, both pointing out that yes, it is evening, and greeting him. "You are… going to bed soon?"  
  
 "I suppose so," he shrugs. "Was there, ah, something you wanted?"  
  
Ah, of course. She beckons him closer. He steps closer. Then she leans up and kisses his forehead— it stirs some fragment of a memory. But it's not all that helpful, because if he's her little brother, of course she'd have kissed him goodnight at some point in his life. Honestly, sometimes it feels like nothing useful ever surfaces.  
  
"Goodnight," she says. And then she turns and walks away.  
  
It impacts Chrom more than it does Emmeryn— _why_ , he wonders, when he's not the one with amnesia? And yet it does, regardless of why, because things that happen very rarely care about the reasons why.  
  
Chrom catches her arm. Gently— he's always gentle with her, like she's something fragile made of glass and silk that'll break if he isn't more careful than is perhaps necessary. Chrom keeps thinking that she's a ghost and the next time he tries to touch her she'll melt into mist— as if the creature standing before him now is an echo sent to taunt him. He's always been protective despite knowing all she can do, and with how she is now, it's even more so. Emmeryn wants to tell him it's alright, I'm still me, I know I don't remember anything important of who I used to be but I still love you as much as the old me did, and it frustrates her that she can't anymore. She remembers she once always had words at her disposal, always weight on her shoulders that reminded her of who she was and what she fought for, and not having any of that anymore is both relieving and terrifying.  
  
She looks back. Chrom stubbornly swipes a tear from one eye with his thumb. She doesn't know what he's doing.  
  
"I'm sorry if this is strange or— or anything, but," he says. He takes a breath. "I can't not say it. Thank you, Emm. For everything."  
  
She looks at him. "For… what I did. Yes?"  
  
"Yes," Chrom nods. "For protecting Lissa and me. Even though I always— always said I was the one protecting you. You did so much for us and I only realized it after I thought you died."  
  
"I'm sorry," Emmeryn says.  
  
 "Don't be," Chrom tries to tell her.  
  
"No." She puts a hand on his cheek. He's grown so tall and strong— Lissa is taller by some miracle and she knows it vexes him so, but she's proud of him anyway. "I am."  
  
 "You didn't do anything wrong," Chrom insists. "I mean— you always told me there were some things about your job that I should never get involved in that were less than great and I see that now, but you were just trying to protect us. That's why you did it."  
  
"You… needed me," Emmeryn says. "And I left." Whatever scraps of memories she'd regained told her nothing about what had supposedly gotten her mind to the state it was in, but she retained more information than people thought. It was easy to overhear things when people assumed she wasn't listening. She knew enough to guess what'd happened, and why. Had she always wanted to die? It was difficult to say, now. Before, she had the weight of a country and a family on her shoulders. Perhaps she'd saved people or something but what that meant was people looked to her for guidance and leadership, people that saw her as a hero and savior and thought she could do anything. She's only twenty-nine now and how long ago was that? How old was she when she had a thousand people relying on her to lead and support them? How old was she when she became a savior?  
  
"No, no, it's—" Chrom swallows. "It's alright."  
  
"Did I want to die?" Emmeryn asks. She looks at him with little emotion betrayed in her expression. When had she learned to do that?  
  
The words drop from Chrom's mind. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again, reaching for something to say. Because he doesn't know— he knows his sister bites her nails and eats sugar cubes and likes to dance but thinks she's bad at it and taught Lissa all she knew about pranks and likes riddles and puzzles and kept a shelf of storybooks in the shelf in their parents' bedroom she read when she was ten and slept there and couldn't because the bed was too big and empty and cold. He knows she named Lissa because their mother died before giving her baby girl a name and that she was the one who convinced him to eat his vegetables and that he didn't need to be scared of ghosts or the monster under his bed and she used to do her paperwork sitting on Lissa's bed because Lissa refused to go to bed unless she knew Emm was there for the first four years of her life and she always cried on mother's day not only because she missed her own mother but because Chrom always made Frederick take him to the meadows outside the castle and help him hunt for the best and prettiest flowers to take to Emmeryn as a gift. He knows her favorite tea and how much she hates mornings and that she's taken her coffee black and hot since she was fourteen years old and that she is the strongest person Chrom knows, but he doesn't for the life of him know what she could've been thinking.  
  
Had she been thinking about it? He had to admit he couldn't blame her— carrying the burden of ruling along with her parent's death and having to be there for her siblings, and having to hide all the pain she must've been in, would've been a weight far greater than Chrom knows he's ever carried even with her dead. But he didn't know, either because she'd hidden it so well or because he'd just never bothered to ask, and that revelation pierced his heart like a bolt of lightning.  
  
 "I don't know," he manages. And Emmeryn nods.  
  
 He has to ask. "Do you now?"  
  
Emmeryn thinks for a minute. Her immediate reaction is _why would I?_ Because she has a place in the Shepherds helping people where people smile at her like they mean it and _say hello, are you doing alright today, Emm?_ and mean it because they care about how she's doing and what she thinks. Because she can see her brother and sister every day smiling like they too know where they belong and Emmeryn knows, deep in her gut, that she would do anything, _anything_ to keep that smile alive.

  "I don't know," she tells him. And he shrugs— that's fair. Truthfully, he doesn't expect her to be thinking much deeper than the evening mail rounds. That's alright, he doesn't need to know her mind is still intact in its functioning. Perhaps it's better for him if he thinks she's broken.  
  
She touches his cheek, and reaches up to brush some of his hair out of his face. "You need… your hair cut," she says. "It is… too long, and… I can't… see you."  
  
"I'll ask Robin to cut it," he says. "You don't need to worry."  
  
She raises an eyebrow. "Not… anymore?" She sounds out the syllables of 'anymore' carefully, her tongue taking its sweet time to shape the letters.  
  
"Yeah," Chrom promises. "I'll take care of everything. Alright?"  
  
She nods, and smiles at him. She kisses his cheek. "I'm… proud of you," she says, and she means it, and she sees him tear up before he rubs his eyes and nods.   
  
"Goodnight, Emm," he says. He kisses her head. And Emmeryn, then, feels like it really will be.

**Author's Note:**

> did y'all catch that foreshadowing


End file.
